Well hasn't that always been the case?

Thanks for the news. Anyone seen any footage on the demo?

Instead of having to split points between big and small now they can all be dumped into a single guns score.

Well... No.

I think you still don't understand.
Listen, the only weapon from Big Guns that is in the new Guns category is Minigun and Light Machine Gun (This was in fallout2 right?).
Flamer & Gatling Laser belongs to EW.
Missile Launcher & Fatman belongs to Explosives,

So dumping points into the Big Guns skill in fallout 3 let's you use all the weapons I typed above.
Dumping points into the Guns skill on the other hand will only let you use Minigun and Light Machine Gun.
Dumping points into the EW skill will let you use the Flamer and Gatling Laser.

So, you don't get to spend 100 points now to access both small guns and big guns.
You need to spend 300 points to access all big gun weapons.
Big Guns + Small Guns =/= Guns.

Oh I see thanks for breaking that down for me.

I think that change was a good idea. It makes "Big" Guns rely on strength more then an arbitrary big guns skill.

ok did anyone at quake con take a picture of the map????? if so show me...... and if you didnt well describe it..... like where vegas was on the map and how big vegas was.....

Eh how so?

I may be wrong about the size of the wasteland. I haven't played Fallout 3 in a while, so I loaded it up to get a look at the world map. From what I remember looking at NV's world map, it looks like it may be about the same size, possibly just a little smaller, and that is if the full out zoom is the same scale in the two games. As for the question about where New Vegas is located, I think it was in the North West part of the map, so not in the center.


Yes, I know they're Elvis impersonators. They even had a school for impersonators in Freeside. I'm referring to the other NPCs, there just didn't seem to be any new variety of faces and hair styles from Fallout 3.


I just want the option to toggle it. I don't like having to use two keys to fire a weapon.


I did turn on hardcoe mode, but the demo save had you loaded down with 2000 rounds of every type of ammo so I couldn't move. It places three new pages on the PipBoy's status page. There was one for food, water and sleep (they weren't labeled that though). It looked like the radiation counter page, it had a scale from 0 to 1000 and it looked like it counted up as your needs grew. Eating, drinking or sleeping would probably move it down. I turned hardcoe mod off rather than try to figure out what to drop. In this version of the game you could toggle it on and off at will, which in another post one of the devs said it would be an option to turn on at the start of the game and you could turn it off later but not back on. I hope they don't leave it as a toggle, that seems like cheating.

I also found a magazine, and it just works like a chem (it shows on the EFF page of the PipBoy). You read the magazine and you get a boost to a skill for a limited amount of time.

Well, Obsidian brought back strength requirements into the series. So now, to effectively use a weapon, you need to have a certain amount of STR. You can't just use a minigun decently with 3 in strength.

Every counter had it's own page?

Wow, that's a lot of pageshuffle to manage all the needs and effects...

I was hoping they'd do that! As a matter of fact, I also hated how you had to get training in Fallout 3 to wear Power armor. I didn't like it for one because if forces you to follow the main quest if you want power armor, and also all NPCs can wear Power Armor without training. I always wished there would be some sort of strength requirement for power armor, or even better, an Armor skill that had a requirement for power armor. But hey, that's just me.

No it doesn't, you can get power armor training for O:A as well. ;D

Yes I do know that but tyson said "I think that change was a good idea. It makes "Big" Guns rely on strength more then an arbitrary big guns skill" and I want to know how scrapping big guns and dispensing the weapons into guns, energy and explosives makes "big" guns rely on strength more...

Well even if you have 100 in Explosives, Energy Weapons and Guns you still won't be able to aim properly with either of the "Big Guns" if you have STR 3.

That seems a little ridiculous...

Why's that?
Strength 5 is the average strength of a person.
You're an average person right?
Do you think you could operate a minigun?
Now, think about it, if 5 is the average person's strength then 3 is a weak person.
Me, I have 4 in strength, so even if I knew the inside and out of a minigun and couple disassemble it and put it back together again does not mean I could operate it.

SPECIAL == important in new vegas.

How so? You can't expect people to be able to accurately use heavy weapons if they can barely lift them - even if they were accurate as hell with lighter similiar weapons.

dang all the skills seem so useful now. its going to be hard to pick out my stats. im not going with a gambling character my first playthrough so i may have low luck. low endurane. mid-high strength and high intelligence

Doesn't matter in essence if I'm going to go the distance and max out my guns skill then it only makes sense to put points into strength. When you leveled in fallout 3 how many points was the average you would get to put into your special stats?

I already know about the magazines, but how much of a boost is it? If it's only a skill boost of one, then I think I would just sell or collect them.

Also, I find it awesome that the weapons have different categories than Fallout 3. Even though a Gatling Laser is a big gun, why doesn't raising your energy weapon skill up make your Gatling Laser more useful? That's one problem that's going to be fixed. I think the stat requirements will be cool also. I really never bothered with the big guns in Fallout 3, so I might not put too many points into the strength category. There's going to be a feeling of planning carefully.

Of course it matters. Low skill with high strength likely has similiar effects to vice versa.

The weapons are tiered, so to use higher grade weaponry (which at least some of the big guns likely are) you also need higher skill (or so I'm led to believe from what's been said about this) to operate them properly, and thus big guns likely need both high skill and high strength, which would be only fair when taking into account that they are the most powerful weapons in the game.

E - If my memory doesn't completely fail me...

When I said it doesn't matter I meant that if I'm going to take the time to max out my guns skill than I'm going to obviously dump points into stength.

Can you answer my question about special stats please? how many points does it take to raise a stat and how many points do you get to disperse when you level up?

We don't know how points are distributed this time around.
I thought you meant skill points not stat points.

And dude, as I said, SPECIAL is going to be important, not just S. But also PECIAL.
So you should think more wisely before deciding your final stats.

In the beginning, you got 5 points to special in Fallout 3 (afterwards, you could max them all out with perks and few quests, if you played right). No words on New Vegas, other than you'll be getting a lot less SPECIAL points overall - and if not a perk, you don't get SPECIAL points at level up or buy them with skillpoints (you didn't in Fallout 3 either).